Questions for our children (11)
[Continued] [This series, which debuted in May 2019, is aimed at encouraging Nigerians to ask questions of their country.] In April 2019, the federal government announced it would establish a new body, the National Emergency Maternal and Child Health Intervention Centre, to address the public health challenge of maternal, newborn and child deaths. Faisal Shuaib, […]
[Continued]
[This series, which debuted in May 2019, is aimed at encouraging Nigerians to ask questions of their country.]
In April 2019, the federal government announced it would establish a new body, the National Emergency Maternal and Child Health Intervention Centre, to address the public health challenge of maternal, newborn and child deaths. Faisal Shuaib, the Executive Director of National Primary Health Care Development Agency (NPHCDA), declared the new plan to be in line with the 2018-2022 national strategic and health plan.
What about Nigeria’s existing Integrated Maternal, Newborn and Child Health (IMNCH) Strategy? What about CARMMA, the African Union’s Campaign for Accelerated Reduction of Maternal Mortality, launched in all African countries in 2009 and 2010 (and by Nigeria on 16 October 2009)?
And what about the four-year, $33.4million investment to prevent at least a million deaths of Nigerian women and children by 2015, which was launched by President Goodluck Jonathan on 16 October 2012 during his time as a co-chair of the United Nations Commission on Life-saving Commodities for Women and Children? Was that simply abandoned?
Speaking of abandonments, whatever happened to the 11,886 abandoned federal projects identified by Mr. Jonathan’s Presidential Projects Assessment Committee in June 2011? If nobody is being held responsible for any of those projects and none of the funds are being recovered, are we ever going to complete any of them, or do we simply multiply them?
What happened to Abdulrasheed Maina, the former chairman of the Presidential Task Team on Pension Reforms who was dismissed from the civil service in 2013 for a N195 billion pension fraud scheme and was subsequently declared wanted by the police, and in 2015 by the EFCC? Maina was then found to have slipped out of the country, only to be secretly brought back in 2017 by the Buhari administration with apologies, reinstated, given a double promotion, and given back pay and heavy 24-hour security protection?
Whatever happened to the July 2004 federal investigation of the Okija Shrines in Anambra State following the discovery by the police of countless decomposing human remains at the shrine believed to have belonged to victims of ritual murders? Did a snake eat the 10 registers that were seized from the shrine priests containing the names of top national political figures who had attended the shrine?
Whatever happened to the $140 million loan obtained by Nigeria from the World Bank in 2003 to finance the “economic reform” agenda of President Olusegun Obasanjo’s second term; the five-year N59.8 billion five-year economic scheme initiated by the United States Agency for International Development in October 2004 to “help Nigeria realize its developmental plans;” and £100m from the United Kingdom, through DFID.
Last year, former Deputy Senate President Senator Ibrahim Mantu, “tired of [Nigerians] being seen as [criminals] on the streets of the world” on account of their nationality, confessed to having helped to rig previous elections on behalf of the PDP. But whatever happened to the petition sent to President Obasanjo by the Mwagharul community of Plateau State in 2003, alleging that Mantu had helped to inflate a project from N1 billion to N3 billion, and to relocate it from Dan Hausa to Langai?
What are the government assets recovered since 1999 from various individuals, including Gen Sani Abacha, and by the Buhari government since 2015? Are there gazette accounts of these recoveries? Why is this not public information? Is transparency being served?
To hear some people tell it, President Buhari really has a sense of humor. In that case, why is he not on TV or Twitter cheering the onslaught of Governor Abdullahi Ganduje of Kano on Emir Sanusi Lamido Sanusi? I mean: the YouTube star is winning!
Speaking at an induction of new legislators in Asaba a few weeks ago, Bolaji Owasaonye, the Chairman of the ICPC, affirmed that in Nigeria, the executive arm of the government is more corrupt than the legislative and judicial arms combined. How do we reconcile this with Buhari’s failure to open his government to public scrutiny?
In April 2019, the Natural Resource Governance Institute (NGRI) said the NNPC withheld over $4.2 billion (about N824.7 billion, representing about 66 percent of the total revenue) from crude oil sales in the second half of 2015, right under Buhari’s “corruption-fighting” nose as Minister of Petroleum. NRGI, which works internationally to promote accountable and effective governance in the extractive industries, observed that only $2.1bn (about N413.7 billion) was transferred to the Federation Account.
Complained Buhari to the Financial Times in 2009 about his loss of the presidential contest in 2007, “The police, the military, the civil service, the judiciary, have all been compromised. This is the billion-dollar question: how do you resuscitate the institutions that run the country?” Ten years later, isn’t it curious that observers are asking the very same question of Buhari’s governance?
Whatever became of the announcement by Indonesia in October 2011 that Nigeria was going to spend $2.6billion to build three oil refineries in the country under which the state-owned PT Pertamina would buy crude oil from Nigeria, process it, and export to Nigeria? Did we, in protection of our national image, determine what had happened, or did we feel we had nothing to protect?
In April 2019, stunning news broke of the illegal withdrawal of US$759,387,755.10 in 2014-15 from Nigeria’s Signature Bonus Accounts in JP Morgan Chase by the Department of Petroleum Resources (DPR), following which the director was queried. DPR denied it was a signatory to government accounts and said it had forwarded the query to the office of the Accountant General of the Federation.
We are talking of withdrawals as follows: $100m on July 7, 2014; $40m on February 19, 2015; 469.3m between April 10 and April 30, 2015; and $150m on May 8, 2015.
Now what?
One year ago, Buhari paid a state visit to the US, taking with him spokespersons who posed as independent journalists (or should that be journalists who posed as spokespersons) to lead applause for Buhari’s anti-corruption “war” and demand when the US would “release” certain military jets Nigeria had purchased. President Donald Trump pointed out that the US gives Nigeria “well over $1 billion in aid every year,” and demanded the dismantling of Nigeria’s “trade barriers,” or else. What did Buhari agree to?
Whatever happened to Vincent Azie, the courageous Acting Auditor-General of the Federation who was fired in February 2003 for publishing the 2001 annual report of his office which implicated virtually every office and agency of the government of scandalous illegalities amounting to over N26 billion.
And who is responsible for implementing the recommendations of the Auditor-General? The 2015 and 2016 Reports, for instance, are loaded from page to page with incredible accounts of outlaw offices, officers and departments with no fidelity to regulations of any kind, leading to irreconcilable financial figures, violations and overpayments. As the virus eats up and through the government, the Auditor-General is left calling for various sums to be recovered, explained or returned.
Does the government read these reports? Do journalists read these reports?
- [email protected]
- @SonalaOlumhense